Goldman Sachs wants to build a 'virtual power plant' in London

As electricity generation becomes more decentralized thanks to renewables like wind and solar power, there's a new need for networks that can aggregate electricity suppliers and distribute renewable power as required. These networks are known as virtual power plants (VPP), and it seems that Goldman Sachs is getting on the game. 

Late last week, Goldman began advertising for a chief technology officer to build a new team that it says will be called the 'commodities sustainable solutions team.' The individual concerned will be building a new platform to allow Goldman to enter the business of buying and selling the power supply generated by renewables. There's a lot of uncertainty in renewables supply and therefore "a lot of volatility in the market," says Goldman. - Volatility implies that there is also money to be made. "We aren’t in this business yet and are looking to build this," says the job ad, noting that the firm intends to build a new "automated renewables platform" or VPP. 

While the CTO job could be based in London or New York, Goldman says its preference is for the new role to be based in London. A team will be hired, although its size is still "TBC."

While the commodities sustainable solutions team is new, LinkedIn suggests it already has a few members in London: Diego Rodriguez, an associate in the global markets division, joined in January. Ingmar Grebien, a longstanding Goldman executive director, and former member of the commodities structured finance team, also joined commodities sustainable solutions two months ago. Grebien says he's, "leading the business development of GS Commodities' clean energy and carbon markets activities," based out of London. 

The new recruit needs to be a senior technologist with experience in the renewables market. Goldman is effectively planning to build an automated algorithmic trading platform for renewables. "If we have a leader who knows what they want from a trading perspective – we can hire, buy, or move engineering resources internally to do the actual building," says the job ad. 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings! Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

Photo by Dimitry Anikin on Unsplash